August 2008
BRYN TILLY reviews the most entertaining Australian film he's
seen in a while ...
It follows more along the crooked lines of a modern noir than a horror,
but it is most definitely a nightmare movie; it even features a couple
of brief, but nerve-jangling actual nightmares for the central character.
Sydney-based director Nash Edgerton’s debut feature, The Square
(2008), is a highly accomplished genre-piece that smirks and slaps
in all the right places.
Raymond Yale (David Roberts) is a middle-aged foreman on a construction
site. He’s married, but he’s having an affair with his
much younger neighbour, Carla Smith (Claire van de Boom), who’s
married to criminal Greg. The adultery is adding anxiety to Raymond’s
already stressful work load. Carla discovers Greg has stashed a duffle
bag full of cash in the ceiling of the laundry, obviously stolen.
Carla makes the decision to steal the loot and makes Raymond an ultimatum;
they should run away together, but her house needs to burn to the
ground in order to hide the theft of the money. Raymond baulks initially,
but when Carla breaks off the affair, he realises he’s in too
deep, and so the dominos start to fall …
The screenplay, co-written between Matthew Dabner and Edgerton, is
a corker. It plays with the all the rules of film noir thrillers,
but they never feel like clichés. There’s the everyman
caught in the middle, there’s the dangerous thug, there’s
the femme whose self-interest borders on avarice, there’s the
middle man crim who’s a spanner in the works, and his unreliable
girlfriend who only makes matters worse, there’s the suspicious
colleagues of the everyman. The key elements, which always make these
kinds of movies so much fun is the initial betrayal, the plan, the
mis-interpretation of information, which results in Murphy’s
Law. In fact, Murphy’s Law could’ve worked just as well
as a title, if it wasn’t already an over-heated maxim.
And most things that can go wrong go wrong. There’s another
adulterous thriller that jumps to mind, the Coen brothers’ Blood
Simple, a brilliantly constructed modern noir that’s been in
my top ten favourite movies of all time ever since I first saw it
back in the mid-80s. The Square is obviously influenced by that movie,
perhaps not as hard-boiled, but no less superbly put together. The
growing unease and tension that builds as the situation gets more
and more out of hand is terrifically handled by director Edgerton,
a diversely-talented man who trained initially as a stuntman and actor.
The excellent performances from his cast, from the central roles through
to the bit-parts, are no doubt due to Edgerton’s skills as a
performer and also as editor.
Brother Joel Edgerton plays Billy, the hired fixer, whose job it is
to torch the Smith house. His anxious girlfriend Wendy (Lisa Bailey),
a peripheral character, is actually instrumental to a lot of the subsequent
bad blood. Further complications stem from disgruntled construction
site mechanic Leonard Long (Brendan Donoghue).
Along with some moments of keenly judged humour, The Square also sports
a few well-executed moments of violence that push the movie into horror
territory; impalement on industrial equipment, truck wheel crushes
foot and ankle, and the proverbial stray bullets. And the grim ending
fits perfectly. A noir movie can only finish this way. Not since The
Magician (which curiously Nash Edgerton produced) have I been so unexpectedly
entertained by an Aussie movie.$32
Bryn Tilly is a Sydney-based writer & DJ,
email him via: bryntilly@yahoo.com
or for more on his DJing click here and to
check out more of his writing click
on this website: http://www.horrorphile.net
